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FOLLOWUP: West Seattle surplus substations’ future goes before council committee

West Seattleites who don’t want former substation sites sold to the highest bidder made their case to the City Council Energy Committee this morning, as previewed here on Monday. (Above, you can watch the full Seattle Channel video of this morning’s meeting.) In addition to the two sites – Delridge and Fauntleroy – for which community groups might get an extra year to raise purchase money, the Dakota site on Genesee Hill might also get a partial reprieve:

Councilmember Tom Rasmussen said this morning that he’s introducing an amendment to give that community, where the save-the-sites-as-open-space movement began, up to three years to raise money to buy it. Katie Stemp of Seattle Farm School told the committee about her new idea for the site, and members of the Genesee-Schmitz Neighborhood Council spoke of their longtime advocacy for keeping it as community-owned space – particularly considering it’s across the street from the under-construction Schmitz Park at Genesee Hill, which will be home to West Seattle’s most populous elementary school when it opens next school year. The two West Seattle substations that do not appear to have community purchase efforts under way right now are Dumar (in north Highland Park) and Andover (on Pigeon Point); Seattle City Light has said other city departments are not interested in the West Seattle sites. In addition to testimony about specific purchase efforts, some West Seattleites argued that open space is priceless -citing a big backlog of demand for community features such as P-Patches, for example. As committee chair Councilmember Kshama Sawant pointed out, this was the committee’s first look at the substations’ fate, so no vote today on the proposed ordinance that would authorize their sale – that’ll be at a future meeting; we’ll continue to follow up as the process proceeds.

5 Replies to "FOLLOWUP: West Seattle surplus substations' future goes before council committee"

As it should be.
If private interest groups wish to purchase these sites, great.
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If not, think of the housing shortage.
Just today a study came out here (Seattle Times) confirming that the ‘skyrocketing’ rents are being throttled back by apartment construction.
Opposition to development counters these improvement with higher costs for all.
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Irrespective of all arguments about what constitutes affordable, more supply will bring down costs to all.

Has the City completed site assessments and remediation at these sites? Substations would be a very high risk purchase by anyone — Diesel, USTs, PCBs…Hard to get a loan to purchase a parcel with environmental issues.

I am sad to see the Dumar site still on the block. Our working community does not have the time (related) or monitary resources to make such a purchase happen. Guess you have to be the other half to make it happen.

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